Search This Blog

Subscribe to this blog

Follow by Email

Huge spike in Indian immigrants wanting to become US citizens: Study

Around 80% of eligible immigrants from India opted to become US citizens by 2015, registering an increase of 12 percentage points from 2005.

A man holds the flags of India and the US. India posted the biggest increase among origin countries for immigrants opting to become US citizens.

India along with
Ecuador posted the biggest increase among origin countries for eligible
immigrants opting to become American citizens between 2005 and 2015, a new
study has found.

By 2015, 80% of
eligible immigrants from India opted to become American citizens, as against
69% in 2005, thus registering an increase of 12 percentage points, the Pew
Research Center said.

Ecuador from Africa
also registered a similar 12 percentage point increase during the same period.

During this period,
the total number of naturalised immigrants in the US increased from 14.4
million in 2005 to 19.8 million in 2015, a 37% increase.

“By 2015, eligible
immigrants from India had one of the higher naturalisation rates (80%) due to a
12-percentage-point increase in its naturalisation rate since 2005. Only eligible
immigrants from Ecuador (68% in 2015) had as large an increase,” Pew said.

“This is a bigger increase than for US
immigrants overall, among whom naturalisation rates jumped from 62% in 2005 to
67% in 2015,” the research centre said, adding that eligible immigrants from Vietnam
(86%) and Iran (85%) had the highest naturalisation rates of any group in 2015.

However, the
naturalisation rates among eligible immigrants from Honduras, China and Cuba
declined or remained largely unchanged from 2005 to 2015, as per the most
recent year for which Pew Research Center estimates are available.

To be eligible for US
citizenship, immigrant must be at least 18 years old, have lived in the country
for at least five years as lawful permanent resident or three years for those
married to a US citizenship and be in a good standing with the law.

Between 2005 and 2015,
the US denied naturalisation applications to nearly one million immigrants.

SAINT PETERSBURG: A
homemade bomb blast at a supermarket in the Russian city of Saint Petersburg injured 10 people Wednesday, officials said, sparking a
probe into attempted murder.

"According to preliminary information, an explosion of
an unidentified object occurred in a store," a spokeswoman for Russia's Investigative
Committee, Svetlana Petrenko, said in a statement.

The blast was caused by a "homemade explosive device
with the power equivalent to 200 grammes of TNT filled with lethal
fragments," she said.

"The investigation is looking at all possible causes of
what happened," she said, adding that a probe for attempted murder had
been launched.

The incident comes several months after Russia's second city
was rocked with a metro bombing in April which killed 16 people and amid
concern that hundreds of Russian citizens who travelled to fight alongside
jihadists groups abroad could pose a mounting security challenge back home.

Rattled by a one-two
punch of betrayal and scandal, Donald Trump on Thursday tried to block the
publication of a bare-knuckle book that portrays his White House as a fetid
stew of backbiting, incompetence and dysfunction. The publishers
responded by moving the release date up by four days to Friday. Trump instructed his
lawyers to prevent the release of “Fire and Fury: Inside
the Trump White House” -- an expose by author and political muckraker Michael
Wolff -- which quotes key Trump aides expressing serious doubt
about his fitness for office. The book -- which
paints Trump as mentally unstable and far out of his depth -- quotes at length
his former ally and chief strategist Steve Bannon, who also received a “cease and
desist” order from Trump’s attorneys. “Your publication of
the false/baseless statements about Mr. Trump gives rise to, among other
claims, defamation by libel, defamation by libel per se, false light invasion
of privacy, tortious interference with contractual relations, an…